ABSTRACT
Andrew Beckett’s love of the law is a shared one.2 It is a love shared with actors, directors and audiences, and a love based upon a number of issues.3 First and foremost, legal proceedings are inherently dramatic, not necessarily in the sense that we will be spellbound by the proceedings of the court, but in terms of the common threads that exist between drama and the law. Carlen puts it thus: ‘Traditionally and situationally judicial proceedings are dramatic. Aristotle noted the importance of forensic oratory as a special device of legal rhetoric; playwrights have always appreciated the dramatic value of the trial scene; lawyers have always been cognisant of rhetorical presentations’ (Carlen, 1974, p 9).
